Sexy Movie (2003) is a made for Video/cable soft core that does it right. A fledgling film maker is working on a film in hopes of winning a fellowship. When his girlfriend, Dawn Arellano, refuses to pose in her bra, then tries to bribe him into giving up film making and become an accountant, he has to start over, and he is out of cash. Then he gets a chance to fill in as camera man on someone else's production. When he gets there, he discovers it is a porno, and ends up directing. WHen his room mate finds out, he coerces him into making more.

This film is full of attractive women showing everything, including gyno-cam shots, masturbating, and having hot simulated sex. Lighting, for the most part, is good, the plot moves along at a reasonable pace, so the sex never gets boring, and the entire thing is played in a spirit of good fun. Tonight, we have images of Dawn Arellano in the opening sex scene, and Amber Ambrose, first in a solo masturbation scene, then later having sex with our hero. Tomorrow, lots more images of naked women, and the rest of the review.

The Cooler (2003)

The Cooler is a brand-spankin' new film which is not even in wide distribution yet. I will review it tomorrow. I'm pressed for time at this moment.

More important than my comments is the fact that Maria Bello got very naked. As Tuna and Brainscan like to say, it's a Three B performance, and we have the goods

• My caps of Bello (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

• Random showgirls

• These are additional caps of Bello from a capper named LC. He did one 4x4 collage, and I cut it into four 2x2s. (1, 2, 3, 4)

21 Grams (2003)

Also in theaters right now.

George Orwell observed that by age fifty, everyone has the face he deserves. Sean Penn seems to be living proof of that adage. Only 43, Penn has a wrinkled, world-weary countenance which makes him look like a sailor who has worked three decades in the Caribbean sun by day, while drinking and smoking himself into oblivion every night. That face shows every grimace he made when his shoulders could not carry the world's weight. It expresses the pain of a man who has borne more sorrows than merely his own.

And you have to figure being married to Madonna didn't help a lot, either.

In fact, the Madonna thing probably explains about 98% of the face thing.

If there is anyone whose face is more weather-beaten and craggy than Penn's, it is Benicio del Toro, with his deep-set eyes, and the deeper bags beneath them.

The Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu knew exactly what to do to get the most impact from those two craggy faces. He shot them with a grainy technique, supported by the harshest lighting imaginable - direct incandescent bulbs, glaring yellows, nauseous greens. In this cinematography, those two men look like horror villains. That was intentional. Penn's heart failed, then he got a heart transplant and that heart failed. Of course, the fact that the character smokes at every possible opportunity contributed to the malignancy. Del Toro is a chronic offender who is trying to make himself a better person through religion.

The third major character is played by Naomi Watts, a woman who connects the two men in tragedy. Watts loses her husband and her daughters to a hit-and-run driver (Del Toro). After the accident, her husband's heart is transplanted into Penn's chest. When Penn is back on his feet, the three characters start to circle around one another , as if performing a ritual dance of death until the inevitable confrontation.

It's a good movie, but it's an art movie. In addition to an unbroken string of tragedies, and a grainy de-saturated look, the film uses a non-chronological time progression which is very similar to Atom Egoyan's narrative technique in The Sweet Hereafter, or Sergio Leone's in Once Upon a Time in America. I love both of those films, but I like this one less.

Leone and Egoyan are artists who told their stories in a compelling way, using the puzzle technique to drive the curiosity of the viewer, and backing the narrative with perfect cinematography and music. More important, they know that gains are balanced with losses. Iñárritu is less experienced than those two were when they made their masterpieces. For Egoyan and Leone, those complex films came after long careers during which they learned what would work. This is only Iñárritu's second film, his first in English. He's talented, but he just seems to milk the script for every drop of over-the-top tragedy.

Name something bad that could happen to these characters, and the script uses it, as if the death of two little girls wasn't significant enough to warrant a movie on its own. Penn has always exploited and cheated on his wife, and he goes right back to it after his transplant, despite her having cared for him as he was failing. Watts is a former party girl who lapses back into drug abuse when her family dies. This means that her blood is not suitable later, when Penn needs a transfusion. As her drug abuse increases, she becomes obsessed with killing Del Toro.  Del Toro himself doesn't mind that idea. He is suicidal, probably homicidal, delusional, beats his son, and is desperate to punish himself for what he has done to Watts's family. Del Toro has his own family, and they sink further into despair when he loses his will to live.

I guess that's enough info to tell you whether you would like this movie. If that's your kind of material, it is a film much praised by the critics. It isn't my kind of material - too unbalanced, too solemn, trying too hard to say, "Look at me, I'm important."

And I don't get it on the film's budget. I'd like to know what Iñárritu did with the $20 million dollars this film was said to cost. The scenes are mostly talking heads, and there are no effects or stunts. I realize that the cheap, grainy, desaturated, hand-held look is not "cheap" filmmaking, but an aesthetic that the director created on purpose, but the film looks like it could have been made for three million dollars. Lost in Translation looks bigger than this film, for example, and was filed in ultra-pricey Tokyo, and that film was made for four million.

So what's the deal? Did 19 of the 21 grams go for salaries?

• Naomi Watts (1, 2)

OTHER CRAP:

• Kristanna Loken, the T3 woman, did a photographic layout for FHM-US, and she's wearing very little.

• Dalene Kurtis, Playmate of June 2001, Free Playmate Gallery Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!

• Julia Schultz, the playmate from February 1998. Free Playmate Gallery Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!

• Create your own Darkly Gothic Poem

• The mens' underwear section of a 1975 Sears catalog featured a picture of a male model whose penis may have been peeking out from beneath a pair of boxer shorts.

• Here are some pre-surgery paparazzi pictures of the Czech education minister who recently had breast reduction surgery.

• ... and here is the story about her breast reduction surgery

• The nudity from the controversial Abercrombie and Fitch Christmas Catalog

• A harbinger of things to come? Starting with The Rolling Stones, recording artists are licensing movie rights to their songs for the theatrical release only. Therefore, the DVD will have to substitute new music.

• The 900 Club - people who weighed more than 900 pounds. According to the site, one man was 7'6", 1000 pounds, and had a 98 pound wife who bore him several children.

• Headline Goofs - the dumbest things ever written by headline writers

• Things Lincoln never really said.

• THE ZERO FILES - Shadowy realms of mind control and paranoia, all in the hands of the FBI. They are like the real world equivalent of the X-Files.

• Fast Times at Ridgemont High Worship

• Rock singer Ozzy Osbourne has revealed in an interview that he was sexually abused as a child.

• ESPN says that Sheffield will accept the Yankees' three-year offer The Yankees have a potential all-star at just about every position. (Matsui would have to improve a lot, but if he hits anything like he did in Japan, he will have a much better year.)

• Terminator vs Dirty Harry

• Roy Disney resigns from the Disney Company. Bitterly.

• An airplane hall of fame for the 100th anniversary fo flight - ten planes that shaped the world

• Stupidity is chic!: "'The Simple Life' is funny in the same ironic way Jessica Simpson's endless whining on MTV's 'Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica' is funny; the sheer cluelessness and shamelessness is a wonder to behold. Even before "The Simple Life" premiere, Paris Hilton's Wal-Mart query -- "Do they sell wall stuff?" -- has already become the show's buzz phrase.

• You want to do WHAT with a manatee? For years, the Florida Marine Patrol advertised a toll-free number so callers could report injured and dead manatees, boating violations, illegal dumping and other problems. When the patrol was absorbed into the new Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission five years ago, the number changed. But the old 800 number lives on, posted throughout Florida on boater education signs, printed in park brochures and included on Web sites for everything from SeaWorld to the Humane Society. Trouble is, someone else owns that 800 number now. Someone with a different definition of wildlife. A sex-talk line called Intimate Encounters.

Other crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for inclusion in Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

• The beautiful Charlotte Ayanna bares her lovely breasts in scenes from "Love the Hard Way" (2001).

Be sure to pay Graphic Response a visit at his website. www.graphic-barry.com.